New
York prosecutor Michael Cherkasky, who helped prosecute the
1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, says there were early
warning signs of the attacks that just weren't heeded. Click
'play video' to watch a report from Dateline NBC's Chris
Hansen.

NBC
News

Sept. 23 — They hit it before in 1993. And on Sept. 11, they hit
it again — this time taking the World Trade Center down. In
the aftermath of the devastating attacks, pieces of the puzzle
are beginning to come together. How did the terrorist plot go
undetected? Were warning signs missed? Should we have known
more? Correspondent Chris Hansen
reports.

“GOD GAVE US the
chance to understand what our enemies were trying to do to us.
Unfortunately, we didn’t adequately learn the lesson,” says Michael
Cherkasky. Cherkasky should know. As a New
York City prosecutor, he was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing investigation. These days,
Cherkasky runs one of the world’s best-known security and investigative
firms — Kroll Inc., a firm that’s done everything from track down Saddam
Hussein’s hidden riches to help ensure that the mob doesn’t regain control
of New York’s garbage business. It even advised the World Trade Center on
security matters. At how many levels did
security or intelligence fail here along the way? “I think that we failed
in every level,” says Cherkasky. “Every level.”
Every level Cherkasky says, from intelligence to surveillance to not
having the will to take down Osama bin Laden long before September
11. First off, Cherkasky says, we should
have known that the World Trade Center continued to be a target.
Here’s what Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of
the 1993 bombing, told FBI agent William Gavin, after his arrest as they
flew into Manhattan. “I pointed out the
windshield,” says Gavin, “and I said to Ramzi, ‘You see the Trade Centers
down there, they’re still standing, aren’t they?’ And his comment was,
‘They wouldn’t be if I had enough money and enough explosives.’”

“I believe
that we had sufficient, specific information to say we were at enormous
risk duing the year 2000, 2001 of having a very very serious incident
here.” — MICHAEL CHERKASKYSecurity
expert, Kroll Inc.

All the more reason, Cherkasky says, to be on the lookout for even
the smallest hint of a terrorist attack. Such as this:
Just two weeks before the suicide attacks, a radio station in
the Cayman Islands received an unsigned letter claiming that three Afghans
who’d entered the country illegally were agents of Osama bin Laden.
The anonymous author warned that they “are
organizing a major terrorist act against the U.S. via an airline or
airlines.” On Sept. 6, the letter was
forwarded to a Cayman government official and sat on his desk until after
the Sept. 11 attack. “The letter was treated
as merely speculation on the part of the writer,” says a Cayman Islands
spokesman. Where did the writer get his
information? He now says that it came to him as a “premonition of sorts.”
U.S. officials have gone to the island to
investigate.

WHAT IS A SERIOUS
THREAT? But how do you know what
to take seriously? Two years ago, Diane and John Albritton say they called
the CIA to report suspicious activity, odd comings and goings at a
neighbor’s home — a home where at least one of the suspected suicide
pilots is now believed to have lived. “I
don’t feel they took it seriously, but maybe I didn’t provide the kind of
information they wanted,” says Diane Albritton.
There have even been reports that some of the hijackers were
bragging in bars just days before the attacks.